September 9, 2026 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here or here.
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Boney M. – By the rivers of Babylon
An evening pause: Performed live 1979. The core of the lyrics comes from Psalm 137.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
September 9, 2026 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, though today the links come from me and Nate P., as Jay was having issues with X. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Startup Besxar tests semi-conductor technology on Falcon 9 first stage
The goal was to test the ability of the technology to survive launch and the space environment. Because it flew on that first stage, it could be recovered afterward for review.
- Regulators in India approve rules that might eventually allow Starlink there
It seems the number of approvals required in India are endless. This process has been going on for several years, with no end in sight and no indication when Starlink will finally get an okay.
Curiosity has now climbed more than a kilometer on Mount Sharp
Click for interactive map.
According to an update posted today by William Farrand on the Curiosity science team, the rover on August 26, 2026 achieved a new milestone, in that it has now climbed a total of one kilometer in elevation since it landed in Gale Crater more than eleven years ago.
The overview map to the right shows the rover’s entire journey, now exceeding 23 and a half miles. Though it has climbed 1,000 meters, or about 3,280 feet, it still has about 14,720 feet to go before it reaches the top of Mount Sharp, about 29 miles away to the southeast.
As the rover has been climbing it has found Mars to be a many-layered planet, with layers upon layers, each holding thinner layers within layers, down almost to a microscopic level, implying that the geological history of the red planet is made up of many cycles, repeating endlessly. And along the way the rover keeps finding strange geology, such as the cool image below.
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Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!
From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.
“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society.
All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. All editions can also be purchased direct from the ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from the author (hardback $29.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $6.00). Just send an email to zimmerman @ nasw dot org.
Astronomers discover a new class of X-ray objects
Using the Chandra X-ray space telescope, astronomers have discovered a new class of unusually low-energy X-ray objects that also emit high ultraviolet radiation but are not linked to any visible objects or star clusters at their locations.
You can read the research paper here [pdf]. The picture to the right is figure 2 from the paper, and shows the two types of these new X-ray objects (HSS and SSS) found in the spiral arms of the galaxy M101, also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy.
The researchers found a total of 84 of these “hypersoft X-ray sources” — so named because they give such low-energy X-rays — in the six different galaxies they searched, using data openly available to the public in the Chandra archive. Two of the galaxies are spirals, M31 (the Andromeda galaxy) and M101 (the Pinwheel galaxy), while the other four are ellipticals. They found hypersoft X-ray sources both in regions of active star formation and areas where there are older stars.
… It is unclear what types of objects are responsible for these low-energy X-rays and intense ultraviolet radiation. The team thinks they most likely involve a black hole, neutron star, or white dwarf pulling material from a companion star. The material pulled from the companion star is heated up to produce X-rays before falling onto the white dwarf or neutron star, or into the black hole. Such binary systems have been seen before, but not with such bright ultraviolet radiation and low-energy X-rays.
The discovery suggests that there may be large populations of binary systems with energetic ultraviolet radiation that have been undetected until now.
The objects were difficult to find because of their low X-ray output, which required this much more careful search to identify. And though the astronomers propose several theories as to what these objects are, there is presently not enough data to come to any firm conclusion. What the discovery does tell us however is that the evolution and death of stars is far more complex than posited by all present theories, all of which tend to simplify things far too much.
Four big European telecom companies considering partnership to block Starlink
A good product strikes fear in old established telecoms
Though not confirmed as yet publicly, four long-established European telecommunications companies appear to be in negotiations to form a joint effort to obtain spectrum for developing a phone-to-satellite constellation that would block both SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Leo from European markets.
Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone are reportedly hatching a plan to take on SpaceX’s Starlink in Europe with a joint bid for mobile satellite spectrum to deliver their own direct-to-device (D2D) services, according to Bloomberg. The report said the four biggest European telcos are in early talks about forming a consortium to bid for spectrum, citing people familiar with the matter. The discussions seem to be just talk for now, given the unnamed sources noted no final decisions have been made about the consortium or spectrum bidding plans.
The joint consortium would then bid for spectrum that is currently held by Echostar and Viasat that will become available in 2027 when their licenses expire. The Echostar spectrum at present belongs to SpaceX as part of SpaceX’s 2025 purchase.
This whole deal is sparked by the European Union’s plans — not yet approved — to re-alocate this spectrum to favor European companies, limiting bidding access for non-Europeans companies to only one-third of the frequencies. By pooling their resources, these companies increase their chances to win the spectrum. Meanwhile, these new anti-American proposed rules are likely another reason the White House asked American companies to pull out of this week’s French space summit, and those companies immediately agreed.
Nor are these established European telecoms the only ones attempting to team up. In May 2026 Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile agreed to form their own consortium, aimed at competing more effectively with both Starlink and Leo.
What I find lacking in all these plans is a commitment to produce a better product. These established companies seem instead more intent in creating a powerful entity capable of blocking the new kids on the block.
Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel, can be purchased as an ebook everywhere for only $3.99 (before discount) at amazon, Barnes & Noble, all ebook vendors, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big oppressive tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.
Winner of the 2003 Eugene M. Emme Award of the American Astronautical Society.
"Leaving Earth is one of the best and certainly the most comprehensive summary of our drive into space that I have ever read. It will be invaluable to future scholars because it will tell them how the next chapter of human history opened." -- Arthur C. Clarke
Vuecrypte – Hi-tech rediscovers Vincent Van Gogh’s lost paintings
An evening pause: Hat tip Cotour.
September 8, 2026 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has hired 47 Amazon Leo satellite engineers to build its TeraWave constellation
Essentially this is Bezo’s right hand taking from his left. The article hints at some sort of conflict of interest, though it admits nothing illegal has been done. I wonder at the quality of the engineers, as Leo has been very slow to reach orbit.
- Video of yesterday’s undocking of Progress MS-33 from ISS
It undocked to make room for the next freighter, but that launch has now been delayed due to rocket issues with no launch date yet set.
- Rocket Lab touts its role as Synspective’s sole launch provider since 2020
It has completed 11 launches successfully out of a 27-launch contract.
- On September 7, 1967 Biosatellite-2 was launched, carrying 13 experiments to study how weightlessness and radiation affected living organisms
It found evidence that microgravity could have a negative impact on some life forms, such as wheat seedlings, while other organisms, such as frog eggs, showed no ill effects.
- Short NASA documentary describing Surveyor-5, the third spacecraft to soft land on the Moon, which launched on September 8, 1967
Its instruments found the lunar soil was made up of 58% oxygen, 18% silicon, 6% aluminum, and 1% iron, with 13% a variety of other elements.
- Video of the crash of the Genesis sample return capsule on September 8 2004 due to parachute failure
It spent two years collecting solar wind material a million miles closer to the Sun at L1, but the crash at landing made it difficult to properly assess what it had gathered.
The tail of interstellar comet 3I/Atlas was richer in nitrogen than solar system comets
Comet 3I/Atlas as seen by Hubble
in November 2025. Click for original.
Data gathered using a new instrument on the Herschel telescope on the Canary Islands has found that the tail of interstellar comet 3I/Atlas is richer in nitrogen than solar system comets, and thus the comet was likely to have formed in a very cold environment.
From the paper’s abstract:
We present WHT/WEAVE-LIFU observations of 3I/ATLAS, performed post-perihelion on 2025 November 30 and 2025 December 2. We simultaneously detect the ions N, CO, CO, HO, and CH located in an antisolar tail. Using common fluorescence factors, we determine abundance ratios of these species in the tail. In particular, the N/CO ratio allows us to constrain the lower-limit N/CO0.001, indicating that 3I/ATLAS is N-rich compared to Solar system comets, a property which can be linked to cold formation conditions.
In other words, the comet likely formed far from its sun, in the equivalent of that star’s Oort cloud.
There is a lot of uncertainty here, but this data point and the conclusions do make sense, based on everything we presently know about comets and their formation. It also illustrates how alike these interstellar comets have been to our own solar system comets, despite the differences. The data strongly suggests that comet and solar system formation are similar everywhere within the galaxy.
Turf war in India over Modi government’s effort to transition to private space
The turf war between the private
sector and India’s space agency
ISRO heats up
In a replay of the same turf war that occurred in the U.S. in the 2010s when NASA first began shifting away from building everything itself to instead using the capitalism model to hire the private sector to do the job, the employee associations from nine different facilities run by India’s space agency ISRO last week issued a public letter demanding that the Modi government reassure them that their jobs are secure and that the work they do building rockets will continue forever.
In a letter dated September 4, the associations questioned what role ISRO would retain under the proposed changes and raised concerns over the impact on existing employees, sanctioned posts, vacancies and future recruitment. The associations referred to remarks made by Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) chairman Pawan Goenka on August 21, in which he said ISRO would eventually stop manufacturing launch vehicles, with such activities being undertaken by private companies or public sector undertakings.
The employee bodies said no official communication had accompanied the remarks explaining the policy framework, legal basis, implementation timeline or implications for the workforce. They sought clarity on whether the design, development, integration, testing and launch of vehicles such as the PSLV, LVM3 and SSLV would continue to remain with ISRO. They also asked how the proposed changes would affect recruitment of scientific, technical, administrative and industrial personnel across ISRO centres.
The Modi government has for the past six years been pushing to encourage an independent competing private sector, while applying strong pressure on ISRO to transfer much of its rocket industry to that sector. In 2020 it created IN-SPACe, a government agency expressly tasked with making that shift happen. As part of this shift, IN-SPACe forced ISRO to shift the management of both its SSLV rocket and its new spaceport at Kulasekarapattinam to private companies. It is also working to do the same with ISRO’s LVM3 rocket.
The letter from these ISRO employee associations is the typical pushback seen from every government union whenever such transitions take place. The employees’ careers are not really threatened, as all they need to do is find work in the new private sector, and that should not be hard for them to do with ISRO on their resumes.
The real threat is to the existence of these union associations, and so they act to whip up political fury to stop the change. Not surprisingly, the press in India picked up this letter with numerous stories, which in turn forced ISRO to issue a clarification, stating the agency’s future remains secure.
Despite that clarification, it does appear the Modi government is not backing down and will continue this transition to capitalism. The head of ISRO yesterday added his own thoughts, noting that while he wished to reassure ISRO’s workers, it remains essential that the private sector must grow and ISRO’s job is to help make that happen.
Expect this battle to continue for the next decade or so, until that private space sector in India gets strong enough to stand on its own feet. When that happens, the battle will end, because everyone will see how much better things are when freedom and private enterprise is allowed to function. That’s what has happened in the the U.S. The same will happen in India.
UK government releases new space strategy
The Labor government presently running the United Kingdom today released a new space strategy using a new $10.5 billion fund designed to jump start that nation’s space industry
Backed by a record £7.8 billion ($10.5 billion) until 2030, the UK Space Strategy brings government’s space investment and activity under one plan to drive growth, strengthen security and back the technologies that underpin modern life.
In reviewing the press release and the actual strategy document [pdf], it appears the government’s focus is to spread that cash around to mostly government projects, though the $35 million investment announced earlier today in the Saxavord spaceport is part of this distribution.
The strategy however also devotes a large section to regulation reform, the first clear recognition by any UK government in years that this has been the biggest obstacle in the past decade to the development of a British space industry.
We have worked closely with the sector to prioritise regulatory reforms to enable growth, strengthen national space capabilities and enhance the UK’s competitiveness. Early priorities include speeding up licensing processes by removing duplication and enabling repeatability, and reducing costs associated with licensing and insuring missions. The CAA [Civil Aviation Authority] will explore options for a more flexible approach to licensing repeat and multiple-mission activity, including through the multi-mission licensing sandbox, with the aim of reducing cost and administrative burden for UK operators.
Whether this effort will work remains decidedly unclear. First, it is not the first priority of the plan. Spending money for government projects gets first place. Second, the language relating to regulatory reform is filled with bureaucratic weasel words and gobbly-gook, suggesting strong resistance within the bureaucracy (and the CAA). When bureaucracies use such language it usually means they are making believe they are cooperating when in truth they plan to do everything in their power to delay or even foil the plan.
Third and maybe most important, this new UK space strategy is very focused on detailing almost minutely what the government wants to achieve, rather than allowing the private sector to grow naturally based on demand. In other words, it is a top-down Soviet-style strategy, the kind that generally fails because there is no way a government can ever truly predict the direction of markets.
France’s capsule startup The Exploration Company raises $450 million in new investment capital
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Structural test model of Nyx. Click for original image.
France’s capsule startup The Exploration Company has now raised an additional $450 million in new investment capital, bringing its total cash on hand to $680 million.
The Exploration Company (TEC), a European space company scaling globally, today announced a $450 million Series C financing, the largest-ever Series C announced by a European space company. It also marks the largest funding round ever secured by an EU-headquartered company led by a female founder and CEO. The round is co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners, Atomico, and the Scaleup Europe Fund, managed by EQT, with participation from TEC’s existing European backers including Balderton, Plural, Cherry and Red River West.
The financing expands TEC’s investor base across both sides of the Atlantic while maintaining a strong European foundation, bringing long-term capital behind a shared objective: to scale reusable space transportation platforms capable of serving customers and institutions across borders. Bessemer’s Alex Ferrara will join the TEC board of directors. The financing brings TEC’s total funding secured to date to approximately $680 million.
The company will use this money to accelerate construction of both its Nyx cargo capsule as well as a new rocket engine, dubbed Storm. The press release notes that they are now beginning construction on the flight model of Nyx, with a 2028 target date for its first orbital launch. Though its first flight is hoping to dock with ISS, the company is very clearly marketing that capsule for use by the five American space stations presently in development. In fact, company officials say they already signed $800 million in cargo contracts, 90% of which are with the commercial space station companies Axiom Space, Vast, and Starlab, with the rest government contracts. As part of that effort, TEC has been expanding its U.S. operations, opening an American subsidiary in July.
Stoke Space raises $1 billion in new investment capital; announces new rocket plans
Click for original graphic.
The American rocket startup Stoke Space announced today that it has raised another billion in new investment capital, bringing its total capital raised to $2.3 billion.
Stoke Space Technologies, Inc. the rocket company developing fully and rapidly reusable launch vehicles, announced today that it has completed an initial closing of its billion-dollar Series E financing round. This funding brings Stoke’s total capital raised to $2.3 billion and will support the company as it prepares for its first orbital launch, expands production and launch capacity, and accelerates development of its larger Nova Block 2 launch vehicle.
The round was co-led by Point72 Ventures and Spark Capital, with participation from General Innovation, Glade Brook Capital, US Innovation Technology, Washington Harbour Partners, Woven Capital, Y Combinator, and other new and existing investors. [emphasis mine]
The highlighted phrase above is also news, as it is the first mention the company has made of a new upgraded version of its Nova rocket, with the first version now dubbed Nova Pathfinder and the upgrade Nova Block 2. The graphic to the right, from a second press release issued today that outlines in detail the upgrade, compares the two rockets, while providing the company’s first detailed flight schedule.
Our immediate focus is flying Pathfinder. We plan to fly multiple Pathfinder missions in 2027 and 2028, giving us a growing body of flight data while we build and test Nova in parallel. Block 2’s first flight is scheduled for 2029.
… Pathfinder’s role does not necessarily end when the larger vehicle arrives. We see value in having more than one way to serve the market, since some missions are particularly well suited to the Pathfinder configuration. Its longer-term flight cadence will be informed by what we learn over the next two years and by the needs of our customers.
The company’s second release also goes into great detail about the rising demand for rockets combined with the general shortage, and outlines how these two rockets are designed to address both. In a sense, Stoke is setting itself up to grab the small satellite market that SpaceX right now dominates with its Falcon 9 and appears to be moving away from as it develops Starship.
Hat tip reader Nate P.
Saxavord gets $35 million investment from UK government, to be matched by private capital
Proposed or active spaceports in north Europe
The Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands of Scotland announced today that it has gotten a £30 million ($35 million) investment from the government of the United Kingdom, that must also be matched by additional private investment capital.
The government investment, which is subject to due diligence, is being announced as part of the UK’s updated space strategy published today (Tuesday), and will be complemented by £30 million of planned private investment.
The spaceport said the funding will support completion of key infrastructure as it moves towards regular commercial launch operations. It is targeted towards all three launchpads, mission management infrastructure and second integration hangar required by international launch companies keen to bring their business to the UK.
The timing of this announcement, only days after Germany’s rocket startup Isar Aerospace completed the first European private rocket launch from Norway’s Andoya spaceport, suggests it is an effort to salvage some positive PR, since Saxavord started its spaceport effort before Norway and yet lost the race for the first launch.
Whether Saxavord actually gets this government investment remains uncertain, as it must be matched by private sources. Considering the lack of interest the UK government has in eliminating the odious red tape that has stalled launches at all UK spaceports while bankrupting two rocket companies, we should not be surprised if Saxavord has trouble raising that private money.
The spaceport presently has two German rocket companies signed on, Rocket Factory Augsburg and HyImpulse, but the former’s launch this year was scrubbed due to technical issues with a reschedule partly stalled due to that red tape. The latter meanwhile only intends to do a suborbital launch. These launches will likely take place, but expect these companies to move elsewhere when they finally begin ramping up their launch cadence. Neither can survive the kind of bureaucratic licensing delays that killed Virgin Orbit and Orbex, and so far the UK appears uninterested in dealing with this issue.
Eagles – Hotel California
An evening pause: Performed live 1977.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
September 7, 2026 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Graphic showing the past flights of the four core engines to be thrown away on the Artemis-3 mission next year
The shuttle was reusable, to a point. SLS is not.
- Graphic showing the size differences between Blue Origin’s manned and unmanned Blue Moon lunar landers
Now all the company has to do is get them launched.
- Cape Canaveral rocket companies Stoke and Relativity advance their launchpad toward first flights
A nice quick summary about the status of each pad
- China proposes a lunar mission deploying 30 cubesats in 2030
It is an international project led by China with Thailand, Serbia, Egypt, Senegal, and Indonesia signed on.
- Video of the September 7, 2013 launch the lunar orbiter LADEE (Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer)
It orbited the Moon for seven months, measuring the dust in the lunar environment.
What is going on with Perseverance?
Click for interactive map.
While there have been no reported issues with the Mars rover Perseverance, and while it appears to be functioning normally as it moves around the hilly barren terrain west of Jezero Crater, there appears to be some sort of indecisiveness in how the science team has been operating the rover for more than a year, with an almost complete black-out of updates to explain what they are doing.
The map to the right provides a sense of this dithering. The last time the rover drilled a core sample was June 6, 2025 (sol 1551), more than fifteen months ago.
Since then, the rover first traveled south along the outer rim of Jezero Crater to point A, then west to point B, then west again to point C, then south to point D, then south to point E, then north again to point D, then east passing point B to head north to its present position at point F. As far as I can tell, during these entire wanderings over more then a year, the science team made no effort to drill any core samples, even though they spent some time at each of these points and even did some preliminary drill work in a few places.
Furthermore, since December 2025 the science team has issued no updates. For most of the mission the team would issue an update about once every two weeks. After the rover left that last core sample site in June 2025, this pattern continued for several months, but by in the fall of 2025 the updates slowed to once a month, and after December 2025 they ceased altogether.
The lack of updates might simply be a budget issue. The team might no longer have enough money to pay someone to write the updates, and is using its money instead to focus solely on operating the rover.
Yet, why have they not drilled any additional core samples? Did the decision to cancel the Mars Sample Return mission impact the operations at Perseverance? Without any mission to bring core samples back, could it be that NASA management issued an order to stop getting core samples?
And why the wandering back and forth over the same ground? It could be they are simply doing an overall survey of this terrain before picking a drill site, but it seems to be taking them much too long to do so.
It seems that the time is long past due for a new update. Otherwise it will start to appear they are hiding something.
Progress freighter launch to ISS canceled due to undisclosed issue with rocket’s third stage
The launch of a Russian Progress freighter to ISS, scheduled for September 9, 2026, has been canceled due to undisclosed issue with the third stage of its Soyuz-2 rocket.
The completed launch vehicle with the cargo ship was rolled out to the launch pad at Site 31 on the morning of Sept. 6, 2026, however soon after the installation of the rocket on the launch pad, Russian and Kazakh sources reported a problem with a third stage, which were serious enough to require a return of the rocket to the vehicle assembly building. According to the KazTAG news agency, the Soyuz-2-1b vehicle was expected to be removed from the pad and rolled back to a processing building at Site 31 on Sept. 7, 2026, on the decision of a State Commission overseeing the launch campaign. No new launch was set at the time, according to a source at the launch site quoted by KazTAG.
While it is not unusal for there to be issues like this for many rockets, it has been generally rare for Russia’s Soyuz-2 rocket, and thus is another indicationg of a continuing decline in the quality of Russia’s engineering industry.
Though unlikely, there is also the possibility that the delay is because of Ukrainian sabotage or a threat of a Ukrainian drone attack. The Ukraine in recent months has been stepping up its attacks on Russia’s space assets, hitting two different rocket factories and its Plesetsk military spaceport. Those attacks however were aimed at specifically blocking the launch of Russia’s Rassvet broadband satellites, which the Ukraine correctly considers a military threat. The Progress is a purely civilian space launch for the international partnership at ISS. A Ukrainian attack to it would likely be more harmful to its cause than helpful, as it would antagonize its European and American allies.
SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites
SpaceX today successfully placed another 27 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The first stage (B1088) completed its 19th flight (21 days after its previous mission), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The leaders in the 2026 launch race:
106 SpaceX
55 China
13 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
11 Russia
For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 106 to 98.
German startup Isar Aerospace successfully launches its Spectrum rocket
Spectrum just after clearing the launch tower
After one launch failure last year and three scrubs in January, in March, and in June, German startup Isar Aerospace today successfully launched its Spectrum rocket for the first time, lifting off from Norway’s Andoya spaceport. As of posting the smallsat payloads have not yet been deployed.
With this launch, Isar becomes the first new European rocket startup to reach orbit. It is also the first solely German rocket company to build and launch a rocket since the V2 rocket during World War II.
The launch was also the first orbital launch from Andoya, putting that spaceport ahead of its European competitors, two spaceports in the United Kingdom (Saxavord and Sutherland), one in Sweden (Esrange), and two proposed off-shore launch platforms based in Germany.
For Europe in 2026, ESA’s government company Arianespace has completed four launches, Italy’s Avio one, and now Isar one. The leader board however for the 2026 launch race remains the same:
105 SpaceX
55 China
13 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
11 Russia
For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 105 to 98.